Amazon Prime Membership Cost May Rise Soon

In the nine years since Amazon Prime was first launched, the service’s price has remained constant, its a $79 per year subscription that gives customers free two-day shipping of over 19 million goods purchased through the world’s largest online marketplace. Unfortunately, its possible that the Amazon Prime membership cost might go up in the near future. Amazon said in a call with investors and analysts that an increase between $20 and $40 is possible for customers in the U.S.

Amazon says that its necessary to make this increase given that fuel and shipping costs are not what they used to be, and with costs rising ever further, the impact has to be passed over to the customer. Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said that the company is “considering” an increase at this point in time, but did not provide a timeframe in which we can expect Amazon Prime membership cost to go up. When asked how said increase will be implemented, Szkutak declined to answer. According to research reports, Prime members apparently spend twice as much on the marketplace as opposed to customers without Prime. The company declines to reveal just how many Prime members are there, last it talked about the figures was in December last year, vaguely saying that they were in the “tens of millions.”